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Saturday, March 9, 2013

Spoken English Test for O/L Sri Lanka-2015

Updated News ->>>>Public
school students will be tested for Spoken English at the G.C.E. Ordinary Level
examination, beginning 2015, in terms of a policy measure initiated by
President Mahinda Rajapaksa under the government’s ‘English as a Life Skill’
programme. A ‘dry run’ of the Spoken English test would be conducted at the
2014 OL examination and 10 marks will be allocated for the subject of Spoken English’
, Sunimal Fernando, Presidential Advisor and Coordinator (English) and Convenor
of the Presidential Task Force on English and IT said.

‘At present,
a one hour Spoken English period is conducted per week in all grades in public
schools at primary and secondary levels, and it is hugely popular among our
students. In fact, the day on which Spoken English is conducted is referred to
by them as "Vinodha Dawasa" or Day of Enjoyment’, Fernando told this
newspaper in an interview. ‘This testifies to the popularity of the Spoken
English programme. What we envisage in this project is not the speaking of
English by the student in a casual, careless manner, but a gradual process of
improvement in Spoken English Language skills by the student, at the end of which
she/he would evince considerable mastery in speaking English, in accordance
with the highest standards. Spoken English in our schools is only the beginning
of this process, Fernando explained.

‘Speak
English Without Fear – this is our prime slogan. There are quite a number of
public figures among us, who, just a couple of years back, could not utter more
than a few words of English but are today speaking English with tremendous
confidence in public. The secret is the uninhibited, bold speaking of English.
One may begin fitfully but with the continuous, enthusiastic speaking of the
language one begins to master it. Today, a tremendous number of our public
school teachers who could not speak in English are showing mastery over it. One
tool which has enabled this to happen is our ‘English in 100 hours’ certificate
course for adults which has helped in imparting to our teachers the essential
skills in Spoken English. In other words, the "trainers are trained"
and they, in turn, are effectively teaching their wards. Thus far, some 5000
Principals and Deputy Principals of public schools too have benefited from this
programme and there is a demand for a higher level course for adults, which is
in the process of being worked out, Fernando said.

‘Until we
took over, the teaching of English in this country was under the control of
some elite universities, institutions and their academe who hardly moved with
the people of the provinces. Strongly attached to ossified forms and rules of
language teaching, they were intolerant of those who, in their view, were
failures. As a result, nine out of 10 of our public school students left school
without a knowledge of English. We have reversed this trend by going into the
countryside and by seeking out from among the "ordinary people",
innovative teachers of English who could teach English to their students in
refreshingly original ways, which do not make the learning of English a
painstaking, fear-ridden process. It is these teachers who are today at the
helm of developing teaching methodology,’ the Presidential Advisor elaborated.

‘These
Master Trainers from the provinces are currently training teachers in the
entirety of the public school system in the new methods of teaching English
that have been entirely developed by them. A main consideration in recruiting
these Master Trainers is that they hail from Sinhala and Tamil homes.
Currently, these programmes are in progress in a big way in the Wayamba, Uva
and Northern Provinces. These Master trainers have thus far trained 23,000 teachers
in their methodology which focuses on Spoken English. They have also developed
a Teacher Guide which encompasses resource material for Spoken English,
Fernando pointed out.

It was also
indicated that the Indian government had helped in a major way in the
implementation of the programme. It was the Indian state which introduced the
persons and institutions involved in the ‘English as a Life Skill’ project to
the English and Foreign Languages University of Hyderabad, which took over the
training of our Master Trainers. One hundred and forty scholarships for the
training programme were offered to Sri Lanka and 120 teachers from our
provincial schools were sent to Hyderabad for the relevant training. These
Master Trainers have, in turn, trained scores of Assistant Master Trainers to
perpetuate the programme.

The
ADB-funded Education for Knowledge Society Project, functioning under Anura
Dissanayake, helped in a big way too by providing Rs. 100 million for teacher
training. At a function conducted at Temple Trees on Feb. 19, a set of DVDs for
the learning of Spoken English by students of grades 10 and 11 and a tool box
of activities for Spoken English for students from grades 6 to 11 were launched
by the President, marking a major boost for the ‘English as a Life Skill’
project. Extract from Online Island